Nature Geoscience Revision (ngeo-revision)

When to trigger

• One or more Nature Geoscience referee reports have arrived
• You received an editor decision (revise / reject / reject-with-appeal-option / editorially rejected before review)
• You need to write a point-by-point response to referees
• You are weighing revision versus appeal versus retargeting to a community journal or Communications Earth & Environment

Read the decision before drafting

Nature Portfolio decisions vary; match your strategy to the decision:

Point-by-point response structure

For each referee comment:

1. Quote the comment verbatim (or faithfully paraphrase).
2. Respond — agree and act, or disagree with evidence.
3. Point to the change — name the exact location ("revised Methods subsection ..., new Fig. 3, new Supplementary Fig. S5, added sentence in para ...").

Conventions that work with Nature Portfolio referees:

• Be courteous and specific; never dismissive, even with a hostile report.
• Quote new manuscript text in the reply so the referee sees the change without hunting.
• Provide a marked-up manuscript alongside a clean version per current Nature practice.
• If you disagree, win on evidence and Earth-system reasoning — add an analysis, a validation, a dataset, or a citation, not tone.
• Respect the container: added material must re-balance via ngeo-length-management (main text ≤ ~3,000 words; extras to Methods/SI).
• Re-check data/code availability and the Reporting Summary if analyses changed.

Worked micro-example: a response entry

Referee: "The circulation inference could reflect the choice of age model rather than a real lead–lag."

Weak reply: "We are confident the age model is not driving the result."

Strong reply: "We agree this must be excluded. We repeated the analysis under three alternative age models (new Supplementary Fig. S5 and Supplementary Table S3): the X ± Y-year lead is preserved in all cases. The Methods 'Age model' subsection now states this, and the main text adds: 'The lead is robust to the choice of age model (Methods; Supplementary Fig. S5).'"

The strong reply concedes the concern, answers with a repeated analysis with uncertainty, and quotes the new sentence with its location — the pattern for every entry.

Resubmission packaging

A Nature Geoscience resubmission is judged as a package:

• Summary of changes — lead with the revision answering the editor's and referees' central concern (usually significance/breadth or grounding).
• One self-contained reply per referee — do not make Referee 2 hunt through answers to Referee 1.
• Container re-certification — added analyses count against the main-text limit and display-item ceiling; state that the revised Article still fits, or what moved to Methods/SI.
• Availability + Reporting Summary refresh — update data/code statements and the Reporting Summary for any new data or code.
• Timing — resubmit complete rather than fast; a revised manuscript typically returns to the same referees.

Handling the interest/significance rejection specifically

This is the signature Nature Geoscience outcome. Options:

• Sharpen, don't inflate. Make the broad-interest case concrete (ngeo-results-framing, ngeo-cover-letter) — a real cross-field consequence and firmer grounding, not louder adjectives.
• Appeal through the Nature Portfolio appeal route only if you have a substantive point the editor/referee missed; appeals are slow and are not for re-arguing taste.
• Retarget to a community journal or Communications Earth & Environment / Nature Communications if the breadth case is genuinely weak — often the faster path to publication (ngeo-scope-fit).

Checklist

• Every referee point has an explicit response
• Each response names the exact manuscript change location
• New text is quoted in the reply for the referee's convenience
• Disagreements are backed by evidence/Earth-system reasoning, not tone
• A marked-up and a clean manuscript are prepared
• Added material is re-balanced against the word/display-item limits
• Data/code availability and Reporting Summary updated for new analyses
• The main text still stands alone after revision
• If appealing, the appeal raises a substantive missed point, not taste
• If retargeting, the right venue is chosen via ngeo-scope-fit

Anti-patterns

• A defensive or curt tone toward a difficult referee
• Claiming to have addressed a point without actually changing the text
• Adding rebuttal material that pushes the Article over the word/display-item limits
• Appealing a sound technical rejection instead of fixing the science
• Re-arguing breadth with adjectives instead of a concrete consequence and firmer grounding
• Letting revisions make the main text depend on the SI

Output format

【Decision type】revise / resubmit-invited / interest-reject / technical-reject
【Point-by-point】N comments — all addressed with locations?  yes / list gaps
【Tone】courteous + evidence-based?  yes / fix
【Container re-balanced after additions】yes / fix
【Availability + Reporting Summary refreshed】yes / n/a
【Stands alone after revision】yes / fix
【Path】resubmit / appeal (substantive?) / retarget via ngeo-scope-fit
【Next】ngeo-submission (resubmit) or ngeo-scope-fit (retarget)

Decision categories, appeal procedures, and markup expectations are durable in spirit; verify the current process on the official Nature Geoscience / Nature Portfolio author pages (Checked: 2026-07-16).